Hearing Max Mayer’s single “Someday I’ll Fly” feels a bit like eavesdropping on a very specific, very modern kind of prayer whispered over a crackling phone line. Here we have this London-based musician, grappling with the magnetic pull of ambition against the equally strong tether of a heart miles away. The song lives squarely in that awkward, stretching space between here and there.
It’s country-inspired folk pop, yes, but the ‘country’ feels less about dusty roads and more about the internal landscape – that wide, sometimes lonesome territory of chasing a dream while promising someone you’ll eventually land back home. Mayer voices the loneliness, the grit required to stay “strong,” and that knot of fear that the waiting might just wear the other person down. You can almost hear the ticking clock underneath the melody.
There’s a particular chord Mayer strikes, a blend of resolve and vulnerability, that strangely brought to mind those ludicrously determined carrier pigeons from old war films – that sheer, illogical insistence on reaching a destination, despite everything. An odd thought, perhaps, but the feeling sticks. The music itself is energizing, hopeful even, pushing forward despite the lyrical anxieties about a love deferred. It doesn’t wallow; it gazes towards a future reunion, however distant.
This isn’t just about love versus career, though. It’s about the promises we make, maybe mostly to ourselves, when standing at a crossroads. It’s about believing flight is possible, even necessary, while simultaneously worrying about the person left watching you become a speck in the sky.
Does the conviction hold? That’s the echo left behind. Makes you wonder, doesn’t it, which takes more courage: the flying, or the waiting?
